Commonly, in a home, business, and/or recreational setting, there are numerous user devices present, each carrying out (or attempting to carry out) one or more actions. Additionally, there are often multiple users who are to be provided different levels of access to such user devices. Further, it may be desirable to provide restricted access to a given combinations of devices, rather than to individual devices. For example, it may be desired to allow an individual to set the temperature of a given room, only within a certain temperature range, and without giving the individual access to the individual fans and/or air conditioning units in the given room.
Also, it may be desirable to provide restricted device access to a given individual and/or set of individuals. For example, consider a hospital room setting, wherein multiple devices are present for measuring patient information. Additionally, the hospital room may include controls to adjust room temperature, lighting, bed position, etc., and a patient may also bring his or her own devices that need to be accessible to doctors and/or nurses.
However, existing role-based access control (RBAC) approaches do not provide capabilities to manage a setting wherein a given individual or set of individuals need to be afforded opportunistic access because the set of resources and users in the system continues to change. Accordingly, a need exists for techniques that provide an abstract (virtual) device with abstract controls to provide the level of access that is intended and/or desired for a given setting.